PROPAGANDA

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School superintendents and teachers throughout the country were glad to encourage the movement as an educational aid for schools. Practice among school children as part of their art courses was stimulated. Contests were held between schools, between school districts and between cities. The famous professor Noam Chomsky wrote more about the kind of propaganda we usually think of—media campaigns that are manipulative, false, and destructive. He greatly popularized the idea that media can help “manufacture consent” through presenting a distorted picture of events.

A propagandist uses existing mental clichés to create mass reactions. It is a far more effective strategy than trying to change how masses of people think through education. But when the example of the leader is not at hand and the herd must think for itself, it does so by means of cliches, pat words or images which stand for a whole group of ideas or experiences. Not many years ago, it was only necessary to tag a political candidate with the word "interests" to stampede millions of people into voting against him, because anything associated with "the interests" seemed necessarily corrupt. Recently the word Bolshevik has performed a similar service for persons who wished to frighten the public away from a line of action. Men are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions. A man may believe that he buys a motor car because, after careful study of the technical features of all makes on the market, he has concluded that this is the best. He is almost certainly fooling himself. He bought it, perhaps, because a friend whose financial acumen he respects bought one last week; or because his neighbors believed he was not able to afford a car of that class; or because its colors are those of his college fraternity. If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. But men do not need to be actually gathered together in a public meeting or in a street riot, to be subject to the influences of mass psychology. Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn. His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences. The Invisible Government: Propaganda makes life in a democratic society more organized and practicalFor education. Higher education relies on funding from state subsidies and/or private endowments, and both of those are helped with a better public relationship. To improve the reputation of a university, they can open publicity offices, college news bureaus, and encourage professors to publicize their latest discoveries in popular media. Often described as “the father of public relations,” Edward Bernays (ThoughtCo.com) was an American business consultant and pioneer in the field of publicity. The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest. [2] When most of us hear the word “propaganda,” we think of manipulation, disinformation, and Nazis. But it wasn’t always like that. The Procter and Gamble Company offered a series of prizes for the best sculpture in white soap. The contest was held under the auspices of the Art Center in New York City, an organization of high standing in the art world.

It is sometimes possible to change the attitudes of millions but impossible to change the attitude of one man. [2] Bernays applied the techniques he had learned in the CPI and, incorporating some of the ideas of Walter Lipmann, became an outspoken proponent of propaganda as a tool for democratic and corporate manipulation of the population. His 1928 bombshell Propaganda lays out his eerily prescient vision for using propaganda to regiment the collective mind in a variety of areas, including government, politics, art, science and education. To read this book today is to frightfully comprehend what our contemporary institutions of government and business have become in regards to organized manipulation of the masses. It is not sufficient to understand only the mechanical structure of society, the groupings and cleavages and loyalties. An engineer may know all about the cylinders and pistons of a locomotive, but unless he knows how steam behaves under pressure he cannot make his engine run. Human desires are the steam which makes the social machine work. Only by understanding them can the propagandist control that vast, loose-jointed mechanism which is modern society.

In the classic book 1984 by George Orwell, an all-powerful government controls every part of life. They do it through constant propaganda, mass surveillance, and severe punishment for those who don’t conform. One of their main tools is the control of language. They created a new language called Newspeak, which is like English but with many words removed and forbidden. The old-fashioned propagandist, using almost exclusively the appeal of the printed word, tried to persuade the individual reader to buy a definite article, immediately. This approach is exemplified in a type of advertisement which used to be considered ideal from the point of view of directness and effectiveness: Context and critical analysis. Connections to ideas from related books. Unique commentary and counter-arguments that you won't find anywhere else. This general principle, that men are very largely actuated bv motives which they conceal from themselves, is as true of mass as of individual psychology. It is evident that the successful propagandist must understand the true motives and not be content to accept the reasons which men give for what they do. This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( September 2016) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)